Grendel's Mother
by Nokros
Summary: Sweeney Todd, revivalverse. More TobyDoctor, but this time from Toby's point of view. Set 5 years after he's admitted to the asylum, and he's still in therapy. There will be more.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I'm not going to lie, this is geeky. It was inspired by the novel _Grendel_ by John Gardner (which was based off of the epic poem _Beowulf_). Specifically, it was inspired by interactions between Grendel and Grendel's Mother in the second chapter of said book. Hence the title. Grendel's Mother, as a whole, in entirely unlike the Doctor, but they have their similarities and I had to write about it. Also inspired by the book is Toby's intelligence in this - Grendel has an extremely intelligent voice despite being an oafish monster. As such, Toby has an extremely intelligent voice despite being in an asylum for five years (in my mind, he was admitted at age 12, and in the story he is 17/18ish). Characters aren't mine, Sondheim, Christopher Bond, Hugh Wheeler, John Doyle, and the actors are amazing, etc., etc.

---

I hardly remember anything outside of these walls. There is a story that is familiar, I know it and it is part of my body, but I do not remember. I just tell, like I have for years. If the story was once a memory, and if the memory was once a reality, it faded like the light from the hall when my cell door closes. I tell a story I do not remember.

She is tired. She comes in and does not look at me. She has not looked at me for years, and I have not talked to her for years. She used to look at me, and I used to talk to her, a long time ago. I would babble about things I might have remembered, and I would bury myself in her lap and feel her body tense. She would sneak looks at me when she thought I couldn't see. I always saw.

But that was years ago, and those moments are starting to fade from memory to knowledge. Now, we are blind and deaf.

She makes me tell the story again. She takes off the straightjacket, and it's cold in the room. I speak, and I hear the words, but I'm still blind and I cannot see what I am doing. Something is wrong, I know. I sense there's a difference between who I am and who the child in the story is, and maybe there didn't used to be. Something has always been wrong, but I do not know what it is and I do not know who I am when I tell the story. I only know that she leaves and she's walking slower and seems shorter. She used to look at me with something, some look, and then hide her face and walk out quickly. Now, there is nothing to hide, nothing but a slow fade, again.

She has gagged me, but she didn't need to. I don't feel the need to litter the silence with unwanted noise. She gagged me and restrained me and left, and I wonder why the bonds are necessary. Other patients that are more violent than I am are allowed to exist without them. I hear them screaming and pounding on the floors. I continue to sit calmly and they see me as a threat.

Not them. Her.

I'm sitting here bound and there are tears on my face that I don't remember crying, and she's gone. I'm alone with the story I know and one thing I remember. Back when this place was alien and the story seemed real, I woke up in her arms. The straightjacket was off, and she was cradling me, humming a tune that escaped her throat awkwardly. I burrowed closer into her breasts, and I felt her hold me tighter. I could smell the warmth of her skin, and her breath fluttering its way into the spiral of my ear. I smiled and turned my head to look at her. Her eyes were focused someplace far away and her lips curled upwards. I had never seen her smile before. I told her I loved her, and she jerked back, realizing I was awake and she looked at me. Her eyes were caught in an uncomfortable junction of fear, sorrow, and self-disgust. The smile was gone, the moment like it had never happened, and I was roughly forced back into the straightjacket, and was left lying haphazardly on the floor. I saw her pour pills from a bottle. My pills, but she didn't give them to me. Too many, and I didn't see her again for weeks.

Since that day, she has not looked at me.


	2. Chapter 2

I dreamed last night.

I have not dreamed in years, but I did last night. I dreamed of her, and what happened after that last memory, when she was gone.

I see her, and she's writhing on a bed in pain, twitching and sweating and watching her makes me feel sick. Her body shakes and her eyes flutter and she suddenly sits up, gasping. She moans and falls to the floor, crawls on all fours, and vomits. Leaning back against the bed, she breathes with temporary relief, holding her stomach (as if that will help).

Footsteps come from down the hall, faintly. She hears them, and her eyes alert and she tries to quiet her breathing. They slow down as they reach the door, and her eyes widen and she presses her back into the frame of the bed, scooting away from the door another half inch. Her nostrils flare and I can almost hear her heart beat, alternating with the steps. She's slowed it down, hoping not to be heard. Step. Beat. Step. Beat.

The feet stop, and she shakes silently, shivering, her eyes fixed on the doorknob. The moment lingers. Her eyes tear up. If the tears fell, they would be indistinguishable from the sweat.

The feet move on, calmly going away, and she breathes and collapses on the floor, in a pool of sweat and vomit. She twists and contorts and her face breaks with pain and the tears fall and she cries exhaustion and pain and loss and is suddenly seized by a fit of wracking coughs. She pulls herself along the floor, spewing mucus, thick with blood across the rough wood floors. It sounds like she's choking. No one comes to help her.

Her arms give way and she slams into the floor, bashing her head and crying out. Her hair is falling out of her usual buns, tangled and dirty and wet with sweat and other fluids. Crying and sweating and falling apart, she rolls over on her back to look at the heavens, but only sees the ceiling.

She tries to inhale enough to speak, but a stabbing pain shoots through her lungs so she can only gasp a word.

"Toby..."

---

She comes in and I stare at her. She does not look at me, but she notices. I can tell by the way her body stiffens.

I do not know if I dreamed the truth, but truth is subjective, anyway.

I should speak. I should say something to her. I want to say something to her, but I'm not a skilled conversationalist. I toy with the idea of saying, "Hello," or "Good morning," but after years of abandoning empty greetings, the idea seems laughable. Besides, I do not know the time of day.

If I can even get my lips to pronounce words.

She takes off the gag, and this is my opportunity. I lick my lips, and almost do not breathe. You're supposed to breathe before you speak, right? I don't remember.

"Who are you?"

That wasn't the right thing to say. Or maybe there is nothing right to say. The act of speech is forbidden.

She freezes and does not look at me. I can sense her stifling the automatic reaction to look over. She knows that I did not forget every day, did not forget her. She moves to take off the straightjacket.

She won't respond.

Unless I make her.

"What's your name?"

Silence.

"I have a name. You know it, you've said it. Toby."

I am hinting at the dream. I feel a hesitation on her part. Aha. I wait.

"Your name is Tobias Ragg," she says, "and mine is unimportant." I had forgotten what her voice sounded like. I still cannot wrap my mind around the sound, like a face you want to remember but always forget. Cold, hard-- no. Calculated. Hiding something.

Progress.

"Can you remember your name?"

She stops.

"You've been here longer than I have. This place does things. Makes you forget."

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a medicine bottle. I have gone too far. That tells me something. She gives me a pill. Just one. It won't cause the blistering pain of last night's dream. I look up at her, and for a second, our eyes meet. I cannot read what hers say - it has been too long. I am the one to look away, almost shamefully.

I take the pill.


End file.
